October 15, 1996

There’s about three inches of snow on the ground, up here at NAU, and I promised myself that as soon as it snowed I would write everyone a letter.

This morning I awoke to the sound of a snake hissing at me. Actually the snake was in my dreams, the hissing was the sound of the snow sliding down the side of the tent. Tent? Snow? You ask. Why would I be camping when there is a winter storm dumping snow on Northern Arizona. I wouldn’t really call it camping since I do it every night. It’s more like being . . . dwellngly challenged. You see when I came up here to go to school this fall I didn’t have a place to live. “No problem,” I thought to myself; “I’ll just camp out for the first month, or so, of school.” That way I can take my time finding a place to live and I’ll save a few hundred dollars by avoiding rent. Best of all I will have more money to spend on a laptop. As I started shopping for a laptop that would fit into my budget I began remodeling my budget in order to spend more on the computer, which led to thinking about spending the first two months in a tent. That would save me at least $300 which is the difference between a Pentium 100 with 8 megs of RAM and 16 megs of RAM. At this point I began Prefecting.

Aside: The definition of Prefectism is: looking at things in such a way as to get what you want. The etymology of this word come from the series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, by Douglas Adams (Which btw (By The Way) (Don’t you just love imbedded parenthetical statements such as this parenthetical statement, which even refers to itself in an unabashed attempt at sentence sentience which was destined to futility by the forthcoming period and close-parenthesis.) (Now back to our original parenthetical statement.) has five tomes but is still referred to as a trilogy. Case in point: The fifth book of the series is titled: Mostly Harmless, or the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately name Hitchhikes Trilogy. In the Third book of the series (Life the Universe and Everything) two of the characters, who are near famine, are presented with some food by some natives. The problem they face is that they don’t know if the food is poisoned or not. Ford Prefect reasons as follows: we are near starvation and if we don’t eat soon, we’ll die. If we eat the food and it is poisoned, we’ll die. However if we eat the food and it isn’t poisoned it will give us the nutrients we need to survive. Arthur chimes in now and asks: “should we eat it or not?” Ford replies, “I’m just trying to look at it in a way such that we get to eat it.” Thus the origin of the term: Prefectism.

The end result is that I have a Dell Pentium 100 with 16 megs of RAM, 810 meg hard drive, 6x CD-ROM, 11.3″ SVGA Dual Scan monitor, touchpad mouse, Windows 95, MS-Office Professional, FrontPage HTML editor, Book Shelf 95, and a two year full coverage warranty, all for only $2800–delivered.

The downside to having probably the best laptop on campus is . . . well, I live in a tent. To be honest I am enjoying this little adventure. I have a four season tent (This is the fourth season.), and a sleeping bag that is rated down to 0 degrees.

The place where I have my tent is only about a mile and half from campus. When the semester started I would take down the tent, pack everything away and store it in a locker at the Rec. Center. Now I leave it out there but I do collapse the tent, with everything inside it, and put a brown tarp over it. Someone would have to walk right next to it to see it, and where I’m camping there are no trails nearby. In the mornings I get up, collapse the tent and go to the Rec. Center for a shower. From there I go to a storage locker about a half mile away and change clothes; then I go to the library, where I have another locker to keep my texts, and finally off to classes, food, classes, food, . . . you get the point. At night I stay in the library until it closes at 11:30. It takes about thirty minutes from the time I leave the library to the time I apply my head to the pillow.

Classes are going well. I have Russian history (ancient to revolution), Renaissance and Reformation, and Historiography (a required course for history majors), to go along with World Geography (a real snoozer) and Intro. to Polysci. (good discussions). Right now I am doing an extended major in history, which means I would not have a minor, but it will take three years to finish. I may, make that probably, change from extended history to history with a minor in philosophy. If I do that I will be able to finish, hopefully, in two years a.k.a. the spring of ’98.

The question of what to do once I graduate is something I have only contemplated in the abstract. Graduating has always been the holy grail on the horizon which never seemed to come closer or sometimes to even be real. I plan to save as much money as possible for the next few semesters—no more computers, unless I see someone on campus with a better computer than me which would require me to . . . NO, I can resist; I don’t have to have the best laptop! My hope is that I will have enough money to do a little anti-cis-atlantic traipsing.

I have a few projects to keep me busy between studying for classes: for my senior research project (I don’t have to do it but I want to.) I’m going to write a research paper on the history of time/calendars. Generally speaking it will be a collection of essays encapsulating the history of time in different cultures and the technical advancement of time keeping. I have always been interested in how for instance the Greeks might have dated things. They certainly didn’t use the Christian method, but what did they measure their years from, or perhaps they didn’t really have a starting date, or it could have changed as new leaders came and went. I don’t know, but I intend to find out. The other project I have on the horizon is a novel/screenplay about the C.S.S. Alabama—a Confederate raider during the Civil War. It has the distinction of sinking more ships than any other ship in history. Some of the adventures surrounding the ship and it crew are remarkable. So much so that I think it warrants a book. Besides, I like telling people that I’m a writer. That way I can spend my summers doing nothing and tell everyone I’m doing research for a novel/screenplay.

I’m now out here in the tent. It seems, somehow, apposite to finish this letter here. The evening, when I arrive at the campsite, is my favorite time of day. After the ride out here I’m warm, my blood is pumping and my mind is awash with ideas. I’m usually oblivious to my surroundings as I peddle out here, except for the downhill part on the ice; I’m acutely aware of every pebble and patch of ice for those few moments. Once I get the tent set up and gear stowed away I like to walk around for a few minutes. Weather it is warm, and the smell of ponderosa is one the breeze, or it is twenty-degrees and I’m standing past my ankles in snow, I am overcome with a feeling of achievement. I have this feeling that I am doing something outstanding. Not in a, “look at me everybody” type of outstanding, but of, “I am not just laying in a warm cozy bed as another insignificant night is about to follow another insignificant day.” I feel that I have challenged myself to something which will effect me for the rest of my life. There are so many possibilities, and no time to be afraid of exploring as many of them as possible.

Tonight the air is calm. There is only the occasional breeze to tickle the trees. Here and there the snow has melted away, but most places are covered a few inches deep. What makes a night like this spectacular is the illumination of the full moon. It is hard to imagine that the same world of the evening news exists on the same planet in which there can be such an ethereal landscape. (Maybe it doesn’t.)

This letter has gotten to the point that it needs to be sent but I feel there is more to say. Perhaps it would be best if it gets off the hard drive, onto paper, and into the mail so that I can concentrate on writing another letter.

To all, a good day